We Had-- Whatever We Had At Georgetown (Am I Going Too Hard?)
by deepdiveintoyoureyes
Summary: Early Season 3. Will and Alicia try to work out how to navigate their early relationship. How do they each feel? What does it mean? Lots of Georgetown flashbacks and fluff to show how the past led to the present. Starts 03 x 01, the morning after the Presidential Suite, includes *that* scene from Will's apartment... All canon friendly. Please review to let me know what you liked!
1. Sunday Nights

"Hey, am I interrupting?" Will asked, walking through the glass door into Alicia's office. His hand gripped his cellphone, hard, and he could hear his pulse.

"Nope," she said, and he clicked it closed behind him. "How are you?" she asked, and her gaze dripped down him, molten, taking in the body that she now knew hid beneath the sharp lines of his suit. He looked back at her sternly.

"Good," he said, curt. She swallowed.

"Do you have a minute to talk?" Will asked, low as a croak.

"About last night?" she smiled through her uncertainty.

"Uh, yeah," he said.

She didn't speak, eyes widening. He watched those dark orbs swell, and remembered how they had darkened as he had pleased her for the first time last night, and his knees quaked and he coughed to clear his mind and throat.

"First of all, there are at least six people watching us right now, so I need you to look like you're stressed or disappointed or something."

"Disappointed?"

"The glass, Alicia, damn this goldfish bowl."

She thought she understood, but her pulse still fluttered fast and uncomfortable. She looked down at the documents on her desk, printed words blurring as she pulled her bottom lip hard between her teeth. _Don't you dare hurt me at work,_ she thought.

"I… need to see you again," he stammered. She heard his nerves, and the shake in his voice more than his words made her feel steady again.

 _Damn you,_ she thought.

"Does that sound… feasible?"

"It does," she said, flicking up her gaze while her head stayed down. His groin clenched.

"Today."

"To— well I… I mean… okay," she said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

—-

She had never been to his apartment. It was both spartan and luxurious, and she was quietly impressed by his deliberate, curated art and furniture, by the dark wood and moody tones. It was perfectly him, she thought, remembering how he had lived at Georgetown, a mess like every other boy who had nobody to answer to, but unlike the others, he made some concessions to aesthetics. Not for him generic prints of noble statesmen or boxing matches. He had silk sheets and soft clothes, too; he said the things that touched your body for eight hours at a time were not where one should compromise. She had liked that about him, it was precocious and unmasculine, even while he had two baseball bats, one lucky and one sentimental, leaning against the desk.

She had slept on those sheets too, more than a few times. The first was when she had drank too much too quickly after finals at the end of 1L, and she had staggered back to Will's place while he bore as much of her weight as he could. On the way out of the bar, two guys from their class had winked at Will and one tried to high-five him, and he didn't get it until they were out on the street, and his chest ached with protectiveness and anger and had wanted to go back into the bar and say something, or do something, but she needed his care and so he gave it. He had slept on the floor, but in the middle of the night, she had woken up and looked around, and then lifted the blanket to invite him in. She saw she was wearing her skirt, shirt, sweater, pantyhose, and she looked at him, a softness in her eyes, a gratitude.

"I'm so hot," she said, peeling off her sweater.

"Do you want like, a t shirt?" he offered, and she grinned and nodded. He threw her a v-neck from his closet, gray marl, and she held it up to her cheek and said, "Jeez, what is this made of?"

As she unbuttoned her shirt, he said, "I'm gonna go get some water," ignoring the two full glasses on the nightstand. He waited outside the door. When he climbed into bed with her, she kissed him on the cheek. He winced at the sterility, but then she said, "Thank you for looking after me," and she put her head on his chest, and he felt proud and good and full, and they slept that way.

—

After he had left her office that morning, he had texted her his address, and told her he'd lied them both out of work. She hadn't liked that, that use of boss authority, but still she went to him, foot steady on the gas pedal, and nothing on the radio, just her breath and the ringing in her ears.

Outside his door, her throat tightened. She paused. Once was a mistake, twice was an affair. _This is fucking stupid,_ she thought, wondering whether going inside would lose her the moral high ground with Peter (no, she decided), or risk her career (perhaps). But there was a wind of inevitability at her back, just like there had been last night at the hotel, when none of fate's furious obstacles could keep them apart.

Will heard her approach and he heard her hesitate. He paced and swallowed hard, exhausted still from last night, and desperate for all sorts of things that he couldn't articulate. Would she knock? Would she leave, and text an excuse? _Fuck_ he thought, _was I too forward_? He knew he had to be careful, knew she liked her hand held and her nudges soft. But his need was blinding and impatient, and he wanted more from her than he knew he could ever have. _You audacious fool, she's going to destroy you,_ he castigated himself while he waited to see if she would knock. _It's already too late,_ he reasoned back.

Somehow this woman had been the story of his life, and they had only spent one night naked together. Well, one and a half, if he counted that December night in 3L right before Peter had arrived, when Will and Alicia had gone to their spot on the fourth floor of the library and then their diner and their dive bar and ended up at her place and —

Knuckles against wood.

Will strode to the door, and paused to vigorously exhale. _Breathe, relax,_ he warned himself, as if platitudes might restrain his raging need, might smooth the jagged edges of his vulnerability.

"Hi."

"Hi," she said, the faintest smile on her beautiful mouth. He grinned at her, standing in the doorway. "Can I… come in?"

"Of course, of course," he said, and he cringed behind her back at his inanity.

"Nice place," she said, as she peered discerningly around. What else was there to say?

"Thank you."

They stared at each other. He swallowed.

"You look beautiful," he tried, "I mean, you always do, but you just, I mean, your hair, you…"

"Will — " she had interrupted. "It's okay," and she smiled, a warm, giving smile, and in it, her permission, and so he thought _fuck it_ and walked to her and held her head still with a hand through her hair and kissed her. He felt her respond and want flashed through him, a hot sear, and painful. He pulled back momentarily, saw longing in her eyes, saw the same look as last night and _god_ how did he get so lucky. He pushed her jacket back off her shoulders, placed it on the couch. They didn't need to speak.

He sank to his knees, and kissed at her skirt.

In her heels, she looked down at him, watched him as he lowered himself and fumbled with fabric, trying to find his way to her.

He pressed his face into her skirt, too scared to look up and meet her eyes. He felt like this properly was where he belonged, down on his knees before her. He knew there was nothing he wouldn't give her, nothing he wouldn't do, or give up. She was the point, she was everything.

Grasping need wrenched his body. He wanted her even more than he had yesterday. Yesterday, she was still a fantasy, a chimera of a lifelong desire. But now, she was real. He had made her come and he knew how to, knew her sounds and her tastes, and knew how it felt to sleep with her and then sleep holding her.

He wanted to put his mouth on her, but he couldn't work out her skirt, could only bunch it upwards, couldn't find enough space. So instead he placed his palms on her legs and hoped she didn't notice they were shaking (she noticed). He ran his hands up her cool thighs to where she was hot. His fingers found her so ready that he moaned. She was vaguely embarrassed by that, still, but he was so turned on that he knew his knees would have buckled had he not been kneeling.

He stood back up to face her, working still with his hand. She stood rigid, in the middle of the room (she still liked the lights off), so he walked them back until she leant against the wall. She perched on a hall table that usually held his keys and wallet.

Will stared into her eyes as he dipped his fingertips into her, watched her mouth open and her eyes close. He couldn't look away. He liked the fact that she was _here,_ that he would be able to remember her here, that he would throw his keys onto this spot every day and _know_. In the Presidential Suite, he had been so scared, trained by decades of want unrequited and dreams unmet to feel that she might flee at any moment. But now, a third time felt more likely that this second time had. He relaxed.

She reached down for his belt, and he withdrew his fingers and, needing as much of her as he could get, he put them in his mouth, a gesture so crude that she flinched and so hot that her lips fell open. She stared at him, her eyes black with lust, and reached down again, more urgent now.

His length was hard and straining, his need asserting itself to her. It felt good to be brazen, after all the times he had felt so ashamed of himself when they had shared beds and his body would respond to her like this. He had felt so ashamed that he couldn't control himself. Mostly, she had pretended not to notice, assumed this was just what happened when a boy was in a bed with a girl. That was easier thought than the idea that your best friend hungered for you in unspeakable ways, ways that you too thought about sometimes, but that implied so much risk that you were terrified.

Now, as she reached down and touched him, the boy in him burned for her, burned for all the times he had been ashamed of his want, or afraid of it.

Earlier, as he drove back home from the office, he had planned to get her into his bed, to do this there, so that later, when he fell back into it, he could ensconce himself in her again, know that they had been there, and smell her on the mussed up silk sheets. But maybe crawling alone into an empty bed would have felt too much of a loss, or maybe he just couldn't wait. He let her guide him into that waiting heat, and the novelty, still, of feeling her body make room for his, and accommodate him, raised chills the length of his spine.

It was like nothing had changed, like her hair still smelled of that lavender vanilla from the purple bottle, like she had just kicked off those little brown ankle boots that she wore for two years, like they had just finished watching a movie under that worn black blanket on her couch…

He didn't dare more with any speed or vigor, scared he would succumb to her too soon. Instead, he moved languorous, and deep as he could.

"Are we overdoing it?" she said, suddenly. She was talking about work, their private performances all day of discord and irritation. He smiled, keeping his face close to hers, his parted lips near her open mouth.

"Diane thinks I'm going too hard on you…"

She smiled, knowing and lascivious as his hips beat out their rhythm, slow and hard against hers.

"Am I? Going too hard?"

She laughed, and the sound flushed him with pride. He continued, "All those late nights…"

"No time off," she joined in, as he pushed all of himself into her. She was so charged by the power dynamics that pulled them in different directions.

"Buried in work," he said, dragging his teeth over her neck just above her collarbone, something he had learned that she liked last night.

"Up to my knees," she said, as his movement had her so lightheaded with pleasure that she barely could speak.

Children's cries abruptly startled her, and she was seized by an eerie flashback of hearing Grace or Zach fight or squeal or want something at just the moment when she and Peter most needed them quiet…

"It's just my neighbors," he said. She felt the vibration of quick little footsteps the other side of the wall she was leaning against.

But she was too far gone to think about these kids or hers, or anything else. She nodded and pressed her hips into him.

"Come on, let's go to the bedroom—" he said, and thought he might lift and carry her, but would that be too cliche?

" _No no no no_ ," she whispered urgently, knifing through his daydream. "Don't move," she breathed, thighs tense and abdomen taut. "Don't move…" He felt her start to clench around him, and he locked his eyes onto hers, her gaze hungry, pleading, expectant.

In that moment, he knew he was in danger, he knew this woman would decimate him, somehow, someday, but not now, and so all he could do was submit. He did exactly as she wanted, looked at her open, wanting mouth, and put a finger between her lips in case she wanted to cry out. As she shattered, she bit down onto him, her teeth causing him that same heady mix of pleasure and pain, and he bucked needily into her and before long he finished too, breathless and lost and infatuated.

They stilled, and then he helped her from the table to her feet.

She smiled awkwardly (what could she say?). He thought she looked scared (she was, but not of him, per se). He wanted to kiss her, wanted to run his tongue over hers, but he felt it somehow wouldn't be appropriate. He straightened out her clothes, and kissed her, first on the cheek, and then, lovingly, on the neck. Then he took off his jacket, needing something to do with his hands.

She smiled at him, slight and taciturn, and he almost laughed at the tension.

"Do you uh, want a drink?" he offered.

"Oh I, I have client meetings later."

"Oh, I just meant water, coffee?" He nearly said _ginger ale_ — she had had a thing for it at law school, it reminded her of her dad, but he couldn't. The intimacy had slipped out from between them.

"Oh, sure, sure," she cringed, didn't know what to do, didn't know why it was like this.

"Sit down, babe," he said, half an accident, and regretted it. "Still or sparkling?"

"Whatever you're having."

As he went to the kitchen, she sat on the couch, plump, elegant, and shook her hands to relax herself.

In the kitchen, Will grabbed a Perrier from the fridge, and two heavy glasses that he used mostly for scotch. He paused for a moment, thinking about how to play this. Would she respond better if he were forwards or aloof?

For years after Georgetown he had wondered where he had fucked up. He had mulled whether he had worn his heart too much on his sleeve, or if he hadn't pushed hard enough.

He had thought back then that she liked clarity, preferred when guys who liked her were direct, and weren't polite about it. But when Peter came along, Will was confused. Peter had played hard to get even while he pursued Alicia. By turns, Peter made her feel like his whole world, and one of his many options. Will had heard from Miriam, who had been his friend first but through him became Alicia's 3L roommate, how Alicia would agonize with her at night about whether Peter would call. She also told Miriam how he would tip so generously when he took her out, but only the pretty girls, and he would touch their arms as he paid them, and Alicia would sit still, small and unnerved, until he turned back to her and stared into her face like they were alone in the world.

And Peter wouldn't phone when he said he would. But then he would surprise her, and he would be extravagant in ways that emasculated Will, when Alicia would coyly share details of dates or gifts when Will goaded them from her, pretended not to feel seething envy and disgust, and pretended that they were just friends so of course she should tell him. Peter had bought her jewelry on their fourth date, which had seemed ridiculous to both Will and Miriam.

Miriam came from an old-money DC diplomatic family and recognized Peter's schmoozing type, called him a "flashy asshole" to Will, but to Alicia she could only caution gently against his cloying affection. When the news had broken, Miriam had phoned Will at work, the only number for him she could find after almost two decades out of touch. "Will?" she had said. "This is Miriam Benson," and before he could say a word, she said, "Holy fucking shit Will, have you seen this?" It had hurt Will to know that neither of them, ultimately, were surprised that Peter was the prostitutes and corruption type. Miriam's voice had sounded shaky, and Will wondered if she was enjoying the drama a little bit, or if he was just projecting a fucked up reaction onto her, because he was ashamed of his own. When Will had first heard, he had felt a moment of hope. He had never stopped waiting for Alicia's relationship with Peter to end: he had started waiting after the second date; kept waiting after the fifth; kept waiting after four months, when they nearly broke up because three people told her Peter had kissed a first-year student at a mixer (he had denied it); and kept waiting when she showed him the diamond and it felt like she had shoved her shining hand down his throat. Will had never stopped waiting.

"When did you get this couch?" Alicia yelled into the kitchen, trying to seem laid-back, and act as if everything about this situation didn't fill her with a dizzying mix of panic and excitement. Will grabbed the glasses and Perrier and walked back to her.

He poured them each out some water and sat on a chair. "I saw it at a hotel actually, in New York. It was in this great suite, with a rooftop balcony, and I was just in a mood. I had two of the best depos of my life, and I settled a case there and then that we thought would go to a jury. I asked about the couch, and ordered two for the apartment. The other one is…" a lump crushed his airways and he nodded over towards the bedroom.

She nodded. "What's the hotel?"

"The Plaza. I would love to show you that view. _God_ it was so quiet up there."

"I love New York. I've never stayed at The Plaza."

He watched her drink. "Can I get you anything?"

She shook her head.

He reached for a remote control and turned on some music, low in the background. Anything to cut through the silence.

"Well," he said.

She didn't speak.

 _I've known you for almost twenty years,_ he thought, _how have we run out of words now?_

She looked at him, and smiled, like she agreed with his thoughts. She looked at the spot next to her on the couch, and beckoned him there with a nod of her head.

He put down his glass and sat next to her, and pulled her legs up onto his lap. It was instinct, an old habit lain down deep into muscle memory.

She sighed and let her head fall back against the cushion. He rubbed her calves.

"That feel good?" he asked.

"So good," she said, and moaned gently. His crotch stirred but he kept his focus. Then she sat up suddenly and leaned into him and kissed his mouth, and it was girlish and playful and his chest ached with the nostalgia. For a moment, he was taken back to the apartment she shared with Miriam. Miriam left town weekends to visit her boyfriend in Baltimore, and Will and Alicia used to sprawl on the couch, Sunday after Sunday, watching old movies and eating pizza or Chinese food. He would rub her shoulders, and she would lean against him, their intimacy absolute, but hollow where he wanted it to be full (and where she wanted it too, sometimes, but the complexity, the risk, terrified her, and she had decided they should wait until graduation for this inevitable thing between them to happen). He would inhale her neck and hair, and _how many nights_ had he wished that she would turn around and kiss him, just like she just did. What would he have given? Her body language now was so familiar to him, that it hurt, somehow.

"I know," she said, propped up on his plush couch, eyes kind and a little sad,.

"What?" he said, softly, rubbing his thumb over her cheek.

"Sunday nights…" she murmured.

" _Leesh_ ," he said, his face lost and longing.

"Look at us, we're grown ups now," she said. "Well, sort of…"

"Sort of," he echoed and they kissed, limbs entwined.

And then the words came. They talked about school, the movies, the time they both got food poisoning when they tried a different Chinese place, the ridiculous people they had known and where they were now, who was divorced, whose partners were minor celebrities, or in office.

Their closeness swelled and crested, and as they kissed and talked and he rubbed her legs.

"I don't know what I would have done without you all those years, you know," she said, soft, all of a sudden.

"The feeling is mutual, baby," he said, and this time he didn't regret it.

"What do we do now?" she said. He didn't know if she meant right now, or now that they had done something that could not be undone.

"What do you want to do?" he asked, tender.

"Peter…" (she didn't want to say his name, and he didn't want to hear it) "…has the kids Sunday through Tuesday," she said, like a question.

"Both nights?"

"Both nights."

He smiled. "Okay. I'll make some plans."

She kissed him.

She gazed flinchingly at her watch, but before she could speak, Will jumped in.

"Not yet. I want to make you come again, what's the easiest way to do that?"

"The… easiest?" she stammered, taken aback by his directness. But he was done with hints, allusion, waiting.

"No, I, I just thought you…" he stumbled, gesturing at her watch and composing himself again. "What's the _best_ way to do that? What's your _favorite_ way to do that?"

She stilled, that twist of lust and shock pulsing inside her. She wasn't comfortable yet being as blunt as he was (Not yet. But she would be soon. He would make her be). Her mouth and throat dried, but the water was out of reach. She licked her lips.

"Oh yeah?" he said drawlingly. "Okay," and smiled out the side of his mouth.

(She couldn't speak, couldn't say, _That wasn't what I meant,_ so she lay back.)

This time he took her skirt all the way off and put it down with her jacket. Finally, he had what he wanted.

The skin of her inner thighs was so soft against his face. (He would, before long, have a thing for this, it would be all he thought about when he woke up and showered alone, and gripped himself with one hand while the other braced against the tile as steaming water beat down onto his back).

He had fucked two women on this couch, but that wasn't like this. He was afraid of quite how different this was. His intention was total, his absorption consummate. He realized that she was quiet when they had sex, breathing her approval or making it known through the press of her fingertips into his shoulders, but when he was here, in his favorite place, he could pull these sounds from her, these whimpers that quivered through her throat, these groans, deep and smooth. They intoxicated him. He loved watching her stomach tense and tighten, loved watching her body brace for the sensation _he_ was giving, the pleasure _he_ conferred.

As he made his own personal kind of love to her, worshipping the softest part of her with his lips and tongue, one memory played itself over the backs of his eyes. He remembered one Sunday afternoon at her apartment, when they had studied together with Miriam who had just broken up with her boyfriend. Alicia was going out with Peter that night.

"I'm sorry about _Bonnie and Clyde,"_ she had said, earlier that week, when she told Will that Peter had made reservations for Sunday. "Raincheck?" she smiled innocuously.

He relaxed his clenched jaw, like it wasn't a big deal, like he hadn't arranged his week around those hours with her, like he didn't every week. "Anytime."

After their study session, Alicia had pushed herself up from the floor to take a shower. She had come back to the living room, hair wet and dark on her cream shoulders, a thick beige towel wrapped around her. "Do you think I can wear pants tonight?" she asked them. "It's cold as hell, but I think it's um, a nice place, so…"

"Why don't you wear your black pants with my boots with the heels?" Miriam had offered. Alicia nodded and thanked her.

Will had _stared_ at her like he had never really seen her before, stared at her bare feet on the floorboards, stared at her face scrubbed clean, watched the rivulets of water run into the creases of her body, the inside of her elbows, the backs of her knees.

It wasn't that he hadn't seen her body before. Both of the past two summers they had gone to a lakehouse in Virginia that belonged to the parents of one of their moneyed classmates. The first summer, Alicia had worn a one-piece, more conservative than the other girls, but the second, she wore a two-piece and Will had tried to stop gazing at her, tried to stop thinking, _those hips._ They'd even shared a room that summer. There was an odd number of girls and boys, and the solution was too obvious for anyone to even discuss. "It's fucking weird that you guys aren't fucking," Miriam had said to them both on the last night, after too much beer and too much sun, as she stood up from the campfire and said, "I'm going to pass out. Hope you keep each other warm out here, or in there, or whatever you do." Neither Will nor Alicia had said a word back, and that night, when she lay on his chest like she had each of the other nights, he felt for the first time a flicker of resentment at how she controlled their relationship. He choked it down, and kissed the curls that spread out over him. "Good night," he whispered, breathing that lavender. "Good night," she said back, kissing him on the cheek and then turning her back for sleep.

But in just a towel in front of him, her hot, wet skin, was just so accessible, so taunting, and he had wanted frantically to stride right up to her and do exactly what he was doing now, wanted to run his lips up her damp legs, and please her, please her enough that she wouldn't go out, and she would stay in, with him, this night and every other night.

When Alicia had turned on her bare toes and walked back to her bedroom, Miriam had looked at Will, pity creasing her forehead. He had stared back, feeling shamed, and pathetic.

"What's wrong with you?" he snapped at her, defensive.

"Right. What's wrong with _me…"_ she had said, rolling her eyes and turning the page in the textbook.

He thought now of the towel and the wet hair as he worked between her legs, and he gratified himself for then and for now.

"Don't stop," she moaned, fingers in his hair, and he wouldn't stop, now or ever, until she told him to. Her legs gripped his head as he carried her into a black, ecstatic oblivion.

"Oh my god," she whispered as he moved back up her body, feeling pleased with himself, and he adjusted them to lie together. He rubbed her neck, and inhaled her hair, not having to hide it any longer.

He pulled a cashmere blanket from the chair over them both to keep her warm. They talked about work, and the meetings she had later, and he listened closely, trying to quiet his own internal dialogue, and press down the anger.

Will was angry at Peter for hurting Alicia, raging actually, for the 24-year-old who he had known and loved, who had been so hopeful and good and undeserving of the horrors that this man had wrought on her life. He felt protective and angry for Sunday night Alicia, and lakehouse Alicia, and fourth floor of the library Alicia, and sad that she now bore fracture lines that ran through her like they would run through a glass that had not shattered when it was dropped but might fall apart the second you put it back on the shelf. Will knew how hard she was working so hard to hold herself together. And he was angry at himself for not fighting harder, angry that he didn't, or couldn't, do anything to stop this, to protect her and keep her whole. He was angry that he had felt so shy and unworthy of Alicia, who he had seen as such a _woman_ when he was hardly a man, and angry at himself for conceding so easily to Peter, just because he was bigger, flashier, and lower of voice, as if their two years of soul-baring, bed-sharing intimacy didn't count for something.

Now as he held her, their breath synchronized, he kissed her earlobe and neck.

"I have to go," she said, frowning.

"Okay," he said, "I should, too."

They sat up and she kissed him again.

They decided she should leave first, alone, just in case, and he walked her to the front door. "So this weekend?" she asked, girlish, again, in a way that picked up his pulse.

"Absolutely. It's been a while since we spent a Sunday night together."

"Oh my god," she said, smiling sad and happy and excited and all sorts of other things that coursed uncomfortably through her. "Sunday night."

"I can't wait," he said.

"The feeling is mutual," she said, and kissed him on the cheek before walking out.


	2. Just Kids

"How did you sleep?" he asked.

"Good," she said, a luxurious stretch arching her spine. Her voice electrified him. "You?"

He hadn't slept very well, but he wouldn't tell her that. He had felt so unsure about being in that bed, her bed, _their bed,_ for the first time. It felt like he was trespassing, and someone could walk in at any moment.

He was also struggling to hold back his feelings, trying to reign in the desperation that had been furiously unleashed. Last night, when he had spooned her, he had held her whole body still, held her suffocatingly tight, and when he kissed her neck, he dug his teeth in softly, until he realized he had her pinned like an animal and he felt embarrassed and released his grip. He had woken up soon after falling asleep. He watched her sleep, feeling guilty and voyeuristic, so he turned away and looked around her bedroom. Wondered what she had been through in this room. If this was a new bed, or if it was from the old house. He guessed he was on Peter's side of it, wondered if, when she had stirred during the night, she had thought just for a moment that he was him, wondered if that had fleetingly pleased her…

"How many times do you think we have woken up in a bed together?" he asked, to silence the taunts in his own mind.

"I wonder," she said, smiling as the sun backlit the curtains. It was Presidents Day Monday, so nobody was expected in the office. And she was in his arms. A luxury of riches.

"It's been a while, huh?" he said kissing her nose. The last time had been in another state, at another time, another life ago.

"God, we were just kids," she said. "What were we _doing_?"

The words bit at him. She didn't realize the blasphemy.

He smiled flat and hollow.

He felt like he felt when he had almost cried with Josh Garmin, his law school roommate. "I don't know what to do," Will had told him somewhere around the start of 3L.

"Tell her dude," Josh said, and Will was galled by the stupidity.

"I can't just _tell her,_ dude. Like, then what? You know? She trusts me, she needs me."

"You're flattering yourself!"

"Okay," he conceded. "Well she needs _something_ from me, and I don't want to fuck shit up for her, and I don't want her to get… whatever she gets… from someone else." It felt like tears, but he wouldn't, not with Josh, so his throat had burned as well as his temples with the choked restraint.

 _Just kids._ Her words echoed in the cool morning light.

Will didn't say anything. He allowed her the moment of memory without rewriting her past to reflect his, to include the fact that nothing about it had felt juvenile or insincere, that nothing in all the years between then and now had hurt him like that _want_ unreturned.

"Would we really only have lasted a week?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"You said that once. Last year, I guess."

She smiled, unsteady. "We… we were way too young."

"And now?" he asked.

"That's… that's too much to think about," she said, tying to sound playful, and he felt ashamed again, that need shamelessly forcing its way free from the shackles he had placed on it.

He tried to distract them both with something more reliable, he kissed her mouth and her neck and her chest and then lower, and he used his hands and his mouth and he found peace there, losing himself in her and in his task.

She moved her hips against him, and she made those _groans,_ and he was so thrilled at her pleasure, at having her, that out of nowhere he felt his own hips move, possessed of a quick rhythm all of their own, grinding into the bed and then, as his mouth still worked against her, he lost control and _,_ almost, it felt, lost consciousness, just for a blinding flash, as he moaned and shattered.

"Oh my god," he said, "I don't know how…"

She looked down at him, startled and bemused and impressed, but then some sort of realization ran down her like chills, and he saw her thoughts on her face.

 _This is… he was… he feels…._

"I'm sorry about the sheets," he offered, still absorbed in her, still working.

She couldn't focus, couldn't relax, said "Let's do this later," but he said, "No," scared that if she got up, she would coil in on herself.

He stilled between her legs, waiting to see if she really wanted him to stop.

She felt the heat of his breath on her, and she was still achingly halfway to wherever he was taking her, and so she relaxed her thighs and lay back and said, "Okay…"

After, they lay together, turned on the TV to watch the news. Sotomayor's confirmation hearings.

"Pat Roberts is such an asshole," Will said.

Alicia nodded. "But Lindsay Graham came out for her!"

"Yeah," Will said. "I think this will be alright."

She paused. "I think it will, too."

—-

In the kitchen, she made them breakfast. They couldn't go out to eat, couldn't take the risk.

"I can make pancakes!" She offered.

"Remember Clarence Thomas's hearings?" Will asked, as fragments of MSNBC floated through into the kitchen.

"Oh Jesus," Alicia said. "That was _not_ a good year," she laughed, beating eggs into flour.

He watched her, watched all the tiny muscles around her wrists and on the back of her arms twitch as she whisked.

 _He_ certainly remembered the hearings, how they had sat and watched them from the brown couch at his Georgetown apartment, where Josh had a cable subscription. They had screamed at the TV, and he had fallen quickly, lethally in love with her.

He remembered that month in creeping, visceral detail. Remembered how they interrupted study sessions with the confirmation hearings, and would break up those with trips to Olde Towne Diner, where they made it their mission to try each of their 24 types of waffle before the end of school, and then they would walk off their meals with strolls up and down the Potomac.

Will had still had a girlfriend, but Helena shrank and receded like something sinking slowly into water with each refill of coffee at Olde Towne, each string of abuse they yelled at CSPAN, each deep breath they took down by the river.

Alicia had given him no indication that she was interested. Because of that, and because he was 23 years old, and because Helena was hot and she could be funny and he was comfortable with her, he planned to keep her around unless and until Alicia hinted otherwise.

But then, the power cut happened. When Helena and Will were in bed at his apartment one night, an outage hit the whole of campus. Alarm clocks, televisions, streetlights. It was dark. Dark like camp out by Lake Michigan had been when he was a kid, so dark that the sliver of moon threw just a sheen of gray light at them, and in darkness like that, Helena's jaw and ears and hair almost looked like _hers,_ her mouth almost looked like hers, and her neck. Will had gripped her wrists, frantic. She guided him into her, feeling his urgency, and moaning with pleasure (he had wanted to tell her not to, because the dark didn't change her voice). He had never fucked anyone so desperately, and he couldn't stop kissing her.

"What _was_ that, tiger?" she asked happily, afterwards.

"What was what?" he said, innocent. "You just look really hot today."

"In the dark?" She asked.

The next time he saw her it was back at home. He ended it. He tried the "it's not you it's me," but she said she didn't mind all the things about him that he tried to blame, she wanted more details, and she was angry, which he thought was fair enough, and she wouldn't stop until he said, "Look I… I'm in love with somebody else. I'm sorry. I really am. I'm sorry."

"Get the fuck out," she said, and he did.

—-

They ate the pancakes at the island in the kitchen, and Will watched Alicia for any sign of retreat. He didn't want her to withdraw from him, close up like a fist.

That had happened before. December, 3L. They had been in the library one Saturday night, back right corner of the fourth floor, when the heat had suddenly broken, so they went to Olde Towne. They sat down at the table that all the staff knew to seat them at, and she was still shivering. "Look at your red nose," he had said. "Rudolph," he teased, thinking _fuck_ she's perfect, cheeks and nose pink, and eyes glistening, dark brown hair curling out from a white hat like she was the image of some perfect winter empress.

She had smiled back at him. "Oh my god!" She said, bouncing on her seat.

"What?"

"We did it! Just peanut butter and jelly left, twenty four out of twenty four! Yes!"

"Waffles for dinner?"

"Uh, yeah! Record-breaking, mission-achieving, waffles for dinner, in fact. I'm very goal oriented," she said, low and grinning.

"I hadn't noticed," he beamed. "Waffles it is." They drank cold beer and warm coffee and they toasted themselves on their accomplishment.

On the way out, she held his hand. She just picked it up, wordless. _Maybe her hands are cold_ , he thought. Snow started sprinkling and they looked up at it, fingers entwined. He looked at her face, watched the perfect little flakes land on the warm rounds of her cheeks and dissolve into a shimmering sheen. He thought how good it was that they had spent five platonic nights in bed together at the Lakehouse last summer, how lucky that he knew not to expect anything from her, even in a moment as perfect and romantic and intimate as this, holding hands in the first snow, because _god_ that would hurt. She smiled up at him, and he thought he saw something in her eyes that he hadn't seen before, but he told himself not to be stupid. _You've been through this a million times._

On the way home, they stopped into Rusty's, the dive bar they liked, to get out of the snow. They had a couple more beers and watched the snow start falling in sheets, thick and opaque.

They slipped and staggered back to hers, and left their soaking shoes and socks by the door. Miriam was in Baltimore, and they kneeled on the couch, looking back out the window at the wonderland being made before them. He put an arm around her shoulder and pulled her into him. Nothing out of the ordinary. She leant her head on his shoulder, something she had done a hundred times. He kissed her head, between them a pedestrian gesture.

"Will?" she said, quietly.

"Yeah?" he asked and turned to her.

She kissed him. He pulled his head back in shock, thinking she hadn't meant to do it, couldn't have meant to do it.

"Sorry," she looked down.

"No, no," he said, panicked, and he lifted her chin with a finger, and searched her gaze. He didn't know what he was looking for, but he found it, and he kissed her back, feeling her lips on his lips for the first time.

Outside was blotted and blurred by the blanket of white, and Will felt suspended in some new world as they kissed on the couch. He ran his hands up and down her back, dizzy and disbelieving, waiting for some instruction, some _something_ from her.

"What do you want?" she said eventually, breathless.

 _I want to be with you, and only you, forever,_ he thought.

"What do _you_ want?" he croaked back.

She didn't answer, but their bodies molded and moved with one another and their exhales grew shallow. He reached for the button of her jeans, couldn't believe this was happening, that he was touching her.

She pressed her hand onto his to stop him.

"I don't know if…" she started. He waited. She didn't say anything. She pulled her cardigan closed around her chest. "Just let me," she said, unhooking his belt.

"Wait," he said. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"Well, you're not gonna… You don't… I don't want you to… if you're not gonna let me touch you," he said, and it was a barefaced lie because there were no circumstances under which he didn't want her to touch him, but it was pure and true because he didn't want to _take_ from her, not when what he had imagined for the past two years was making her arch and groan and feel good.

She rested her hand on top of where he strained and burned. "Well, it feels like you do want me to," she said, teasing.

He felt ashamed, somehow, that his desire was so manifest, he felt so powerless and vulnerable that he couldn't find words, so he picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. He pulled her to him, and he tried again to run his hand around the waistband of her jeans, and she said, "It's just, it's too —"

He never knew the end of that sentence, and he had thought about it ever since.

The next morning, they woke up together and she barely looked at him.

"Olde Towne?" He asked rhetorically, because it was brunch and they never did anything else.

"Oh, I, I have to go."

"I… what?"

"Yeah, I'm sorry, I've got some stuff… I'll see you in class."

"Class? That's not 'til Wednesday," he said, incredulous.

She pulled on her boots. "Mhmm! See you then!" she said, and waved goodbye before darting out.

"She waved at me. _Waved_!" he told Miriam, who arrived home a few minutes later. "And then she left me standing here alone, in _her_ goddamn house!"

He left, and he didn't go back that evening. _Annie Hall_ sat on his desk, waiting. He didn't call, and neither did she.

After class on Wednesday, he walked up to her. She was packing up her bag and talking to Andrea, who had the seat next to hers. Seats were assigned. Alicia tried to be kind, but sometimes Andrea was too much. She was overeager, earnest, and not well schooled in social cues. She was peppy and preppy, with a blonde ponytail that wagged like a dog's tail as she animatedly gesticulated in her socially unaware way. She stood too close to people when she talked to them, and constantly dropped things - pencils, books - and then with a shrill peal of self-deprecating laughter, would say, "My mom always said I am just the _biggest_ klutz!"

"Hey guys," Will said, trying to keep his voice even.

"Dude!" Andrea jumped in, "Did you see the game last night?"

Alicia mouthed, "I've gotta go…" and slid out.

On Thursday, she didn't come to class. She wasn't in the library, wasn't at home according to Miriam, wasn't at the diner, or at the pool where she took out her stress with timed laps. He wondered if he should go wait on her doorstep. His thoughts skipped back and forth, from _she can't hide from me forever,_ to _there is absolutely no fucking way you will demean yourself like that._ He didn't go.

On Friday, Andrea walked up to him after class. Alicia was back in her seat today, and he watched her hair move as she took notes. He had words ready for her. But at the end of the hour, Andrea appeared and asked him something he didn't care about, and flicked her hair. Will noticed that she was flirting with him the same way he might notice a traffic light changing, or an elevator arriving. A plain occurrence, logistical. She put a palm flat on his chest, in the middle of the classroom, and he tore his gaze from Alicia to look down at her hand, and then up into her eyes, which were blue and pretty, by all accounts. He felt Alicia look over, felt her stare. She pursed her lips and walked out.

On Sunday, Alicia showed up at Will's front door. "Miriam's in town this weekend, so I'm here. I've got _All The President's Men._ Do you wanna order noodles or pizza?" He stared at her. "Are you gonna let me in?" she asked. He stood aside.

"Um, pizza, I guess."

"Good," she said. "Me too."

They ate and they watched, but she sat with her legs crossed, leaning against the far arm of the brown couch.

"Listen, Will," she said, after the credits rolled. "I'm sorry about last week. I shouldn't… I shouldn't have been weird."

His ears rang waiting to hear what she was apologizing for, and then his stomach dropped when she continued.

"I crossed a line. We're friends, you know? We don't… I think that, the snow… I was just in a mood, and it was inappropriate for me to… I'm sorry, anyway."

He looked at her blankly.

"Are we ok?" she asked.

"Sure," he said. _You weak piece of shit,_ he scolded himself.

"So I entered this thing on Friday, some charity matchmaking game thing. It's at Lincoln Bar. Sarah made me. It's gonna be totally mortifying. Do you wanna come with? Grab a drink before?"

They went together and he left alone. He watched her leave, watched this big guy who had been on stage with her take her away with him. He watched through the window, watched the guy take off his jacket to keep the rain off her. He watched them cower intimately at a bus stop, laughing like children, like something hilarious was happening, something funnier than rain, and then… Will swallowed hard and looked away.

—-

Two weeks later, she kept talking about this _Peter_. Will sat with Miriam at her kitchen table, when Alicia walked into the room, a shock of lipstick on her mouth.

"Well isn't _somebody_ a vamp!" Miriam said, standing up. "You look hot, girl." Miriam kissed Alicia on the cheek as she walked to the bathroom.

Will stared at Alicia's mouth, red, now, and, somehow lewd.

"What?"

"You look… different."

"Good different?" she asked.

"Well, you…" he started, and he saw her eyes flicker in doubt. He wanted to say _you don't need that,_ but who was he to lecture her? Maybe she liked it, and maybe it made her feel good, and he hoped that it did, hoped that it wasn't for _him_. Will hated that she wanted to attract Peter so much, he saw the lipstick in the context of all the things he had come to know about this guy, like that his exes were a string of beauties who favored high heels and tight skirts.

"Sure," he said.

"Ok, I gotta go," Alicia said, as Miriam came back to the kitchen and sat down at the table again.

"Don't break his heart!" Miriam yelled after her.

Will winced.

"Do you think she is wearing that stuff because she thinks she's not good enough without it?" he asked Miriam once she had left.

"What are you talking about?" Miriam said, not looking up from her magazine.

Will shrugged and looked out the window.

The next week, Will was on the way back from baseball practice, feeling unusually pumped and upbeat, when he saw them coming on M Street. He steeled himself. It was the first time they had been properly introduced.

"What are you guys up to?" Will asked.

Alicia hesitated. Peter spoke, "We're going down to the Potomac, actually. She knows all the best spots!"

Will nodded, smiled, ignored the feeling of blades in his chest.

"Oh you know what?" Alicia jumped in. "I just gotta run into this store and pick up a card for my mom. You guys will be alright for just a second?"

The men stood together, leaning against the wall. _He's so goddamn tall,_ Will thought.

"You're uh, in school here too?" Peter said, sounding like such a man.

"Yup. 3L also."

"Hmm," Peter said. "What are you doing next year?"

"A firm, in Chicago."

"Oh, no kidding."

Will looked at the sidewalk, looked at the black splotches of gum that had grown as firm and dark as the concrete over years and years. He dug a toe of his sneaker into it.

"Oof, that's a nice ass," Peter said, causally elbowing Will. Will snapped his head up to face him as if he had just confessed to a murder. Will watched Peter watch a tall Blonde woman pass them.

"What, you don't like her? You like a more petite gal? Curvy? No judgment, dude. What about that one?"

Will couldn't kick his ass. Alicia would kill him, if Peter didn't first. He gawped, grasping for words, when the bell above the store door tinkled cheerily and Alicia bundled out.

"When… When's Veronica's birthday?" Will stammered, and Peter's eyes narrowed at him.

"Is that a Picasso print?" Peter interrupted, looking down at the card in her hand. "My mom's gonna love you. A girl who knows her art history," he said. "We'll uh, we'll see ya later, Will," he said, throwing a burly arm around her, and Will thought how small she looked beside him as they walked away.

"It's not a fuckin' crime," Josh had said when Will got home. "It's just looking. They're not even married." He tried a new outlet.

"Ew, fuck!" Miriam had said. Better. "She didn't hear anything?"

"No, she was in the store the whole time."

"Good. God, he's just somebody's sleazy uncle waiting to happen, isn't he?" she laughed.

 _How is this funny?_ He thought. "Well, what are we going to do?"

"What do you mean? We're not going to do anything," Miriam said, rummaging through her purse. Will stared at her, unsure how or why this conversation wasn't a priority. "Either she'll work it out by herself, or she won't," she said, pulling out a chap-stick.

"And what happens if she doesn't?"

"I don't fucking know," Miriam said. "Dude. She's a big girl. Go get drunk. Go get laid. Just let it go. Okay? I'm late to meet a friend." She punched him jovially on the shoulder and walked away.

—-

He took those words to heart. Started sleeping with girls, first just the ones that made him laugh and then the ones that caught his eye, and then whoever he found at Rusty's. When that didn't work, when it just made him feel hollow and hateful, he pursued something like what she had. Someone to think about, someone to do things with, someone to give all of this _feeling_ to.

"So, what's going on with Andrea?" Alicia had said, slipping onto the bar stool next to him one night when everybody was out for Miriam's birthday. She put a glass of red wine down onto the bar. He had never seen her drink that before.

Will didn't turn to face her. He wasn't sure they were close enough anymore for her to be able to tease him. He could smell her shampoo and he took a fiery gulp of Jack to replace it.

"I don't know. I mean, I think it's quite serious."

"It's…" she stifled a smile, trying to be kind. "Really?"

It killed him that she was being polite with him. He wanted her to say, "Are you kidding?" and laugh with him like they would have done up until three months ago, when she started being pulled away from him. It was slow at first, but recently it hadn't been slow, and now he couldn't remember the last time they had been alone together.

"Yeah," he shrugged. "She said she wants me to meet her parents."

"Oh! Okay, well that's great," she said, and she meant it, and he knew she meant it, he knew she wasn't jealous, and that they had slid somehow into cordiality. That nothing seemed to make her jealous broke his heart. He had thought hard, and he was ashamed of it, about who he could go for to hurt her most, about whether she had an achilles heel and just who it might be. He considered mutual friends, former roommates, her moot partners, wondering who would make her reassess, and discover that he was, after all, important to her.

He turned and looked her in the face. Saw she was wearing those goddamn earrings as if they weren't gauche as all hell for a place like this. He looked at her dark red mouth.

She met his gaze, and she swallowed.

"Are you okay?" she asked him.

"Sure," he shrugged, finishing his drink.

"Is that… is that… whiskey?"

"Yup." He said, beckoning the barman for another. "Alicia…" he started, his veins on fire. She waited. "Are you happy?"

She paused. Started speaking, stopped. Started again. "I am," she sighed. He didn't say anything. He didn't say "with him" but they both knew. She continued, gently. "He's… loving, Will, and he takes care of me. He's incredibly smart and ambitious. I think he wants to run for Congress one day," she said, expecting a laugh or reaction that didn't come. She saw he was hurting, knew it was somehow to do with her, but couldn't allow herself to know how much, or exactly why. She sighed. "But I miss you!" It wasn't _I miss you,_ it wasn't loaded and pregnant, it was _I miss you!_ And it was so friendly that it was caustic. (She didn't mean for it to sound that way.)

"Well do you wanna watch a movie on Sunday?" he asked, tipping back his new glass, his question blunt and resigned like the final offer from a salesman that knew he wouldn't sell.

She flinched and he nodded. She didn't need to say, "I'm sorry, we have plans," but she said it anyway, and the _we_ echoed in his head as he said, "Okay," and pushed himself up from the stool, slapped down a twenty, and walked out into the night without another word.

(He didn't know that she went home and cried that night).

—-

"These pancakes are really good," Will said. "Do you cook a lot?"

"I uh… I used to."

"Oh yeah? What happened?" he asked, chewing, and then he stopped, swallowed quickly to clear his mouth. "You know what, don't answer that," and they met eyes and smiled with all that did not need to be said. (She felt surprised at how comfortable this domesticity felt, another man in her kitchen. But she supposed he wasn't just 'another man.' She was grateful.)

He put their dishes in the dishwasher, and he washed up the pan and the whisk in the sink. He sat back at the island, leafing through the Times. She brought last night's wine glasses back from the bedroom, Merlot marbled dry at their base. She put them in the sink and ran the faucet, the T-shirt she was wearing riding up as she leaned forwards, and he stared at her hungrily, and seconds later he was standing behind her, hands wrapped around her, moving, grabbing, kissing her neck.

He gripped her hips. It was everything the bedroom hadn't been: fast, animal, rough. Maybe he was trying to prove something to her. Maybe he was trying to prove something to himself.

They showered, and in the bedroom he smiled at her.

"What?"

"You look really sexy in a towel," he smiled.

They got back into bed and watched a movie. The new Woody Allen.

"That was alright," she said afterwards. "It was no _Manhattan_ or _Annie Hall._ "

"Do you know I've still never seen that?"

"Which?" she asked.

" _Annie Hall._ Do you… you won't um, remember this, but you totally bailed on me the Sunday we had it planned."

"No! Did I?" she laughed.

"You did! And I never watched it!"

"Oh my God, I'm sorry," she said, smiling a pitying frown and kissing his forehead.

"You should be, that cut me deep!" He smiled.

They laughed together, and it was a nice laughter that held somehow their past in a knowing way, that made it a real and important thing, but not so heavy and serious that it could not be teased.

"Well you bailed on _me_ when I wanted to go see the cherry blossoms and you said you would help Andrea Simmons go buy a new dresser!" she ribbed, eyes widening like she had caught him.

"Oh jeez, I remember that!" He chuckled. "You didn't even want to go with me…" he started, remembering how Peter had been out of town the weekend the trees had bloomed. He benched the rest of the sentence. "Do you think I _wanted_ to do that? Four hours at Pottery Barn! Four hours _anywhere_ with Andrea, I can't be around people that happy." She giggled.

"I was jealous," she said, coy and smiling.

"No, you weren't," he replied, brushing her bangs out of her eyes. "I wanted you to be, but you weren't."

"I was," she said, their words still light and easy, and comfortable, somehow.

"Jealous of what?" he asked.

"Well, you were, you were my best friend," she said, and he wasn't sure how that answered the question but he took it, and he held it, and it nourished him.


End file.
